Who Watches The Watchmen rumours? At DC, it seems their legal department do, even on Christmas Day.

Yesterday, Bleeding Cool received the following letter from DC Entertainment;

Gentlemen:

It has come to our attention that you have impermissibly and without authorization posted assets containing unpublished intellectual property owned by DC Entertainment. We do not need to belabor the unlawful nature of this action (which could not have taken place without the breach of a confidentiality obligation), and demand that those assets be immediately taken down and no further postings of this nature transpire. This demand is made without limitation of DC Entertainment’s rights or remedies, all of which are expressly reserved.

Very truly yours,

AMY E. GENKINS
Senior Vice President, Business & Legal Affairs

A cease and desist letter on Christmas Day. Who’d have thought it? Except we weren’t exactly sure as to what it referred to, we have after all run substantial pieces on Dark Knight Rises very recently. Further communication, with our repeated request for clarification, today confirmed that Amy E Genkins was indeed referring to the Watchmen 2 pieces of art featuring the Comedian by JG Jones and Nite Owl by Joe and Andy Kubert.

As a result of confirming this, Bleeding Cool removed the artwork immediately. Certainly running the pieces is editorially justifiable, but it’s Christmas, so why not?

We have asked if io9, Comics Alliance, /Film, Comic Book Resources or any of the other sites that also ran the artwork have been similarly targeted, but the continued existence of their versions of our story suggest not. Or that they have bigger lawyers.

If nothing else, this does dismiss the belief among some that Bleeding Cool had just run some artwork from private commissions. These are clearly pieces of artwork that DC Comics has commissioned and has a claim to. And from others, that Bleeding Cool was being used as some surrogate disseminators of such information from DC.